Emma's cold parting words stayed with Alec the whole night and he was still thinking about them in the morning as he headed back up to Briar Hill. It was still dark by the time he got there to take another look around at the hut and the surrounding cliffs.

Ellie joined him a half hour later as scheduled, rustling about in a plastic bag. Alec glanced at her and she noticed.

"Am I too rustly?" She asked a little bit sarcastically before she dug out a tumbler and held it out to him. He didn't take it immediately as he eyed it in confusion.

"What's that?"

"Well, it's freezing. Long weekend working, big day ahead. I thought a thermos would help." Ellie answered, sounding a little bit annoyed.

Alec took the offered thermos before he looked back out over the edge of the cliffs. "It makes no sense."

"What?" Ellie asked.

"Body found at the bottom of Harbour Cliff, two miles away. Why move him there? Why not just chuck him off here? It's a perfectly good cliff to chuck a body over."

"Can you not talk about it like that, please?" Ellie requested tiredly.

Alec ignored her as he stared out at the cliff edges again - specifically, at the sea over the edge.

"Any boats gone missing recently?"

Ellie glanced at him sharply before looking at the sea as she realized what was on Alec's mind. "A boat would leave no tracks. You could moor it on the shore, leave a body, and the evidence would be washed away."

She looked back at him searchingly but Alec gave no indication whether he agreed with her or not. Still, she somehow suspected he did. Alec glanced at his watch.

"What time's Mark Latimer coming in?"

"Nine." Ellie answered before adding quickly, "Sir, I can't believe he's capable of this. There's any number of reasons why his prints could be in that hut."

"You need to look at the evidence in front of you, and stop behaving like you're his bloody solicitor." Alec answered bluntly before he turned and walked off to take another look around the hut.

It was light by the time Alec was done and he opted to walk back to the station while he thought. As he was walking into town, he saw Emma running again. She saw him immediately too; her chocolate brown eyes met his for a brief second and then she looked away immediately, altering her course to avoid him. Alec had a feeling she was cross with him and he suddenly recalled what the young man from the Echo, Olly, had said before.

"She's damn scary when she's mad. Plus you know she doesn't forgive easily."

He wondered what Olly had meant as he walked into his office. He'd need to get her checked against Mark Latimer, see if there was a connection. And he needed to make sure her background check was done as Ellie had said she'd get it done. There were too many things about the blonde young woman that bothered him, like little itches on his skin and he needed to get them scratched.

An hour later Alec was reading through Mark's file when Ellie knocked on his door.

"We're all here ready when you are, sir."

Alec glanced up from the file before he looked back down and said casually, "You do it."

Ellie balked. "I can't. I've never done that."

Alec just took off his glasses and put down the file before walking out of his office.

"In you go." He told her as he passed her and Ellie gaped after him.

Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the entire team of officers who had been assigned to the case now that the holiday weekend was over. Ellie cleared her throat.

"Good morning." She was greeted by a chorus of greetings and Ellie shuffled awkwardly on her feet as she started the meeting while Alec leaned far too casually against the wall on the side.

"I'm uh… welcome. I'm Ellie, DS Miller. Uh. So, we've got a lot to get through, um, and we're already behind. Because of the weekend. And not having the resources. Which are here now. Which are you. So, um…So, you know, we just have to… to hit the ground running."

She realized she was rambling and hastily moved on. "Right, priorities today, house-to-house inquiries, uh, CCTV retrieval, um, technical data retrieval from phones, and, uh, alibi follow-ups. And on top of that, we've had a lot of information in, so we need to sift through that. Okay, thank you."

She dismissed everyone and the team dispersed, getting a move on their day. Ellie saw Alec disappear into the break room and she stormed after him, fuming.

"Very inspiring." Alec told her as he placed down a mug of tea for her.

Ellie ignored the friendly gesture as she snapped at him furiously, "Don't ever do that to me again! What, just because I'm not running to arrest Mark Latimer, I get thrown to the lions?"

"Hey, you didn't mention how we can all discount Mark Latimer," Alec noted sarcastically, "or your own exhaustive list of suspects."

"Don't harangue me!" Ellie snarled, wishing she could throttle the man in front of her. "God, you're such a…!"

Alec didn't seem the slightest bit fazed and he listed off, "We need to interview your son. You should have an appropriate adult, not you, obviously. Relative, maybe?"

Ellie gawked at him while Alec pushed off from the counter and moved on as though everything was perfectly normal.

"Latimer's downstairs. We should start. Oh, before that." He turned back to Ellie. "Where does your friend Emma Symons live?"

"What?" Ellie asked, wondering if she had heard wrong. He was ignoring her anger and he was asking her about Emma again?

"Her address?" Alec repeated. Ellie threw up her hands.

"I don't remember exactly, but the flat across the street from the Traders. Why?"

"No reason."

And with that, Alec walked off to fetch Mark for the interview. Ellie's answer explained why he'd seen her practically every day, she was probably returning to her house from her run when Alec walked from the Trader Hotel to the station. And it was also, Alec thought, in the right direction to explain why Mark Latimer had gone to Briar Hill, the closest secluded spot between the Latimer House and the Hotel, to meet someone in secret.

Across town, a bell over the door chimed and Emma looked up from the bustle of kids coming into the preschool with their parents. She smiled.

"Joe."

"Hey, Em." Joe Miller greeted, kissing her cheek lightly. Emma crouched down in front of the pram Joe was rolling.

"Hello, Freddie! How are you, darling boy? Did you enjoy Florida? Of course not, you missed auntie Emma, didn't you?" She cooed and Freddie giggled and jabbered at her although she didn't really understand much aside from 'Mummy' and 'no, no'.

"That's right, your mummy was terrible to take you for three weeks." Emma joked before kissing Fred's cheeks and standing up to face Joe again.

"How are you doing, Joe?"

"Best I can, like all of us, eh?" Joe sighed before he reached into the big diaper bag he carried with him. "Oh, I just came to give you this."

He handed Emma a gift bag, which she took with some surprise.

"Presents from Florida." Joe explained. "A paella pan, so you can finally practice"

"Oh, thanks, Joe. And tell Tom and Ellie too." Emma said gratefully. He smiled and nodded but both their moods had dipped slightly. Under normal circumstances, she would have gotten the gift on Friday when they'd all gather around for dinner or on Saturday for lunch, along with the Latimers. It wasn't usual for her to not have seen Joe at all since he and his family had returned from vacation until the next Monday.

"How are they doing, Joe?" Emma asked softly. Joe sighed and shrugged.

"Tom's taking it hard, of course. Ellie's working like crazy, been barely able to see her since Friday morning."

"Yeah." Emma sighed. "I keep thinking if I should call but I don't want to bother her, she's probably getting flooded with calls and stuff as it is."

Joe nodded heavily before he examined her.

"You look awful, Em." He noted, gazing at the shadows that had appeared under her eyes since the start of the weekend.

Emma looked back to the classroom of preschoolers before she looked back at Joe and admitted in a low voice, "It's just… hard. You know? It wasn't just some kid we barely know, it was Danny."

Joe nodded while Emma continued softly, "People have been asking me all morning how Beth is doing and I don't know what to say. 'She's devastated because her son's just been brutally murdered'? They don't want to hear that but why do they ask?"

"Yeah." Joe sighed and Emma looked at him.

"You, though, you're probably the only person this morning who had a right to ask and you haven't." She smiled gratefully. "You're their best friend too. But instead, you asked how I was. Thanks for that."

"Well, you're my friend like they are." Joe smiled but it faded and he looked down. "And I can imagine what they're going through without needing to ask."

Emma nodded morosely when Fred gurgled. They both looked at the boy and crouched down, smiles back on their faces for the moment as Fred garbled his baby talk at them insistently, the innocent boy completely unaware of the tragedy that had touched so close to his life. And for some reason, that innocence was enough to get both Joe and Emma to be able to laugh despite their heavy hearts.

Alec was not impressed. And that was putting things mildly.

Mark Latimer's morning interview had been extremely poor and things were looking even worse for Danny's father. His alibi about meeting his friend (whom he had apparently finally remembered was his work-mate, Nige) was flimsy at best and didn't match his wife's answer to Pete's inconspicuous questioning, not to mention Beth couldn't corroborate his movements; Mark's explanation for his prints being on the sink at Briar Hill had not checked out as Susan Wright who Mark had said he got the keys from denied he had been there; and he owned a boat and there was blood on the boat.

Alec was now in the middle of trying to get some backing to Mark's terrible alibi but the more he interviewed Nigel Carter, the more he could tell the man was not a very good liar. And then, Mark's alibi was blown completely out the water.

"Nige, do you want to stop pissing about?" Ellie demanded as she strode over to where Alec and Nige were talking just inside his home garage. While Alec had been busy interviewing Nige, she had been 'chatting' with his mother and she was furious as she came over.

"Your mum just said you were in with her all night till 10:30 then you went out round the corner for last orders and not with Mark."

Alec huffed a sigh as he tucked away his notepad while Nige froze, clearly caught and unable to say anything.

It was not much later that Alec was back in the interview room with Mark.

"Since we talked earlier, we checked up on a couple of things." Alec informed the other man. "Number one, the woman who holds the keys to the hut on Briar Cliff has no memory of you fixing a burst pipe."

"That's bollocks." Mark muttered, rubbing his face with his hands. "I got the keys from her, I fixed it, I took them back. She has a caravan, she has a dog."

"She says not."

"Well, she's lying." Mark shot back, lowering his hands to stare at Alec.

Alec just looked back at his pad as he rattled off, "Number two. Your alibi is rubbish. Your mate Nige is not a good liar."

"He's not lying, I was with him."

"No, no, no." Alec cut Mark off immediately, his impatience and irritation seeping through slightly. "Let's not insult each other's intelligence. Your son has been killed, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you would mislead us."

"Why'd you lie, Mark?" Ellie asked, her tone and expression sorrowful and, worse for Mark, for the first time doubtful.

"You just wait, Miller." Alec interjected as he looked back at his pad. "I haven't done point three. Point three. We had a look at your boat. And there's bloodstains in it."

He looked at Mark, waiting. The man just stared down at the table with his arms folded defensively across his chest.

"Whose blood is in the boat, Mark?" Alec asked and Mark took in a deep breath.

"Dan's." He admitted. "We took the boat out the week before last. When we had the hot spell. It was me, Danny and Chloe, fishing about a mile offshore. We caught three sea bass, we took them back and we barbecued them. Danny was messing around on deck, he caught the, uh…"

He glanced to the back of his own foot as he remembered what had happened.

"He caught the end of a line in the bottom of his foot and he gashed it open. And he was hopping about and yelling and screaming. Chloe was there, so you can ask her. And Em," Alec's eyes narrowed just slightly as Mark continued, "she saw us come in. She saw Dan and helped bandage him up so Beth wouldn't worry when he went home."

"We will ask both of them." Ellie nodded.

Mark looked between them expectantly, waiting either for some follow-ups or to be let go. Alec decided to remind him about the very large gap in his plea for innocence.

"Why are you lying about where you were on Thursday night?"

"How's me being here helping you find Danny's killer?" Mark demanded, again avoiding the question.

Alec noticed but didn't comment for now as he pointed out yet again for the other man, "We cannot rule you out until we know where you were."

"Everything's becoming part of this, ain't it?" Mark snapped angrily, further cluing Alec in to the fact that there was definitely something going on with the other man. "Everything, and it's got nothing to do with this!"

"Everything counts now." Alec shot back sharply and sternly. "Who did what, who was where? Everything connects and feeds this case. If we don't get the truth, we don't find who killed Danny. That starts with you."

"Mark, just tell us about Thursday." Ellie pleaded and Mark exploded.

"I've already told you, haven't I? I've told you about the hut and you're saying I'm lying and I'm not!"

"Mark," Alec interrupted in exasperation, "my son dies, I'd tell a police officer everything. I just would."

He stared at the other man. He hadn't noticed the fact that Mark had not defended himself for Thursday night, instead falling back on the excuse for his print being on the pipe. Alec made a note to have the paperwork checked for whether there had been a burst pipe in the last three weeks but it wouldn't change one important thing.

"Why did you ask Nigel to invent a false alibi?" Alec asked again.

"Oh, I don't know, everything I say is getting twisted and I can't think straight." Mark muttered, rubbing the back of his neck and again refusing to answer the question.

Alec's jaw tightened and he made his decision. "All right. Mark Latimer, I'm arresting you for obstructing a murder inquiry-"

"No, sir-" Ellie protested but Alec cut her off.

"Enough. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given as evidence."

"Is this what you do, El?" Mark asked his friend scathingly and Ellie pleaded, "No, Mark, don't make us hold you, just tell us the truth."

But Alec was done with the other man and he ordered as he got up, "Miller, take his things."

Mark sighed while Ellie looked devastated and Alec got up and exited the room.

Meanwhile, Emma hiked up the hill toward the church, and she sighed as she found her friend sitting on yet another bench overlooking the cliffs.

"Hey, Beth." Emma sat down beside her friend gently. "Came as fast as I could."

"I can't breathe, Em." Beth muttered, rubbing her hands over and over again. "I'm going mad in the house, I've cleaned everything I can five times over, I tried to go back to work but they thought I should stay at home and do nothing, I can't do this!"

"I'm sorry, Beth." Emma sighed, hugging her friend's side. "They were probably trying to be respectful."

"I don't want it!" Beth snapped and Emma nodded.

"I know."

They sat for a few minutes in silence, when they were interrupted by a voice, "Do you mind if I-"

Both women glanced over as a man of about forty gestured at the empty seat on the other side of the bench.

"No." Beth muttered while Emma frowned. Did the man really have that little tact?

"Thanks." The man sat down; apparently he did have that little tact. "I love this view."

Emma's frown deepened and her unease grew as the man glanced at them again, at Beth. She did not like those looks and she liked it even less as he said, "Sorry if this is rude, but I know who you are."

Beth tensed under Emma's arm while Emma said rudely back, "It is rude, so please just leave."

The man glanced at her warily and he explained, "Please, don't take this the wrong way. I have a message for you, for Beth."

Beth looked back at the man expectantly while Emma waited impatiently. Her jaw dropped when he added, "It's from Danny."

"No, no, no, don't you dare!" Beth gasped while Emma was frozen for a moment in utter shock and hatred.

"I promise you, he just-" The man began but by then Emma had recovered her powers of speech. And some.

"Leave her alone, you filthy, conniving, sorry excuse for a man!" Emma snapped as she pulled Beth up with her.

The man stood as well, looking a little bit shocked but not undeterred; Emma pushed Beth away from him and she ordered, "Beth, go, go home quickly. If this man comes after you, call the police."

"No, please-" The man started to look worried then but Emma said loudly over him, "Beth, do it!"

"What about you?" Beth asked and Emma snarled, "I'm going to give this prick a piece of my mind first for hurting you."

Beth backed away, walking quickly off while Emma glared at the man who pleaded, "Please, I'm not-"

"No, shut up," Emma cut him off. "I don't care what you have to say because I know your kind of people. The scum, the roaches that live in the underbelly of every town, every city, every country. You come crawling out when there's a chance to make money and you don't care who you hurt to get it."

"I'm not trying to hurt-" The man tried and Emma laughed derisively.

"No, I'm sure you won't physically hurt Beth. But what you would do is so much crueler, so much worse. So you listen to me now."

Emma glared harshly at the man, who leaned back from the hatred burning in her eyes.

"If I ever see you around Beth again, if you contact her, if you don't just leave her alone, I will call the police so they can find your dead body. Do you understand me?"

He stared at her in shock as Emma turned on her heel and stormed off. As soon as she was out of earshot of the man, she was dialing on her mobile.

"Ellie?" She asked as soon as she heard the click.

"Em, this is not a great time-"

"I know you're busy, El, but there's a man who appeared around Beth claiming he has a message from Danny." Emma explained.

"Description?" Ellie asked immediately.

"Average height, maybe a bit taller than my and Beth's height, normal build, really short brown hair, light eyes might be blue or grey, face like a potato that might look better after a good sock."

"Shit." Ellie muttered. "Okay, did he talk to Beth?"

"He tried, but I sent her away and told her to call the police if he follows her." Emma answered with a dark scowl over her shoulder to where she could just faintly still see the man standing by the bench.

"Did he?"

"No, I was busy yelling at him and threatening him if he ever came after Beth again." Emma answered and Ellie exhaled sharply.

"Let's hope that was enough." The policewoman muttered before saying, "Thanks, Em. Keep me informed if he appears again but we'll look into stopping him."

"Will do. Thanks, El." Emma hung up, still fuming. A flash of greying red hair crossed her mind's eye and a female voice whispered in her head, promising to talk to her father. Emma's teeth clenched so tightly she thought she heard her jaw squeak. It was all the same. It was always the same.